Music review: Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite at the Orpheum

Well, the collaboration works. It could have been stolid hero worship. It could have been an awkward attempt at modernizing the sound of a legend. It could have fallen flat for any of a dozen well-intentioned reasons. Instead, contemporary blues-rocker Ben Harper and longtime John Lee Hooker compatriot Charlie Musselwhite left no room for doubt Saturday at the Orpheum: For just over 100 minutes, they were two bluesmen wholly in tune with one another, generations apart or no.